In an era where just about every musician has undergone a substantial reassessment in which younger generations reclaim these artists as unconventional idols (especially those who were previously labelled as uncool), Neil Diamond remains a bit of an outlier. One of the most popular musicians of his day, but someone who has struggled to maintain relevance, especially with newer generations that still tend to see his music as the product of the past, the kind of songs that their parents enjoyed, which makes him inherently less hip than some of his peers. However, we can still appreciate his popularity for several reasons – and when stories of how his music has touched the hearts and souls of certain people, it’s difficult not be at least partially moved. This is precisely what makes the story of Mike and Claire Sardina so compelling – a pair of lonely souls who meet each other by chance and decide to start a Neil Diamond tribute band, leading to a lovely marriage and a brief flirtation with major success, but also bringing with it several misfortunes that test their resilience in various ways. Their lives have been dramatised in the form of Song Sung Blue, in which director Craig Brewer attempts to explore their story, following them from their initial meeting to the very end of their personal and professional relationship, showing their triumphs and struggles in vivid, compelling detail. Unfortunately, despite some promising material and some decent effort, the film is a complete misfire – a heavy-handed, bland work that focuses less on the music and more on the tragedies. Brewer has previously done some solid work behind the camera (particularly when it comes to music – Hustle and Flow is a strong film, and Black Snake Moan is at its best in its musical moments), but he is hopelessly out of his depth here, taking an already middling story and turning it into something that fails to do anything beyond the bare minimum at the best of times, and which borders on manipulative at certain points.

Music is the universal language – where spoken words fail, melodies thrive. This is a common sentiment that has often been used to justify the importance of using music as not only entertainment, but as a form of expression, in which our deepest existential quandaries and curiosities are filtered through song. This has often been the root of many films about how music can change the lives of people who embrace its healing power – and Mike and Claire, who were otherwise known as Thunder and Lightning in their professional lives, defined this beautifully. They met when they were both divorced and seemingly at their lowest points, leading sad lives plagued by alcoholism or loneliness, and where they sought solace behind a microphone, the easiest way to process their emotions. This pain was turned into art, which drew them together and set off what seemed to be a relationship that would potentially change both of their lives. While it did, they found themselves enduring tragedies that punctuated their triumphs – a fatal car accident left Claire an amputee, the couple had to deal with the ebb and flow of the music industry (which wasn’t always receptive to cover and tribute bands), and Mike’s own physical health was always a limitation. The film attempts to track their rise and fall, as well as their efforts to pick themselves up again – but whether or not it was effective is entirely up to the viewer, who is placed in the awkward position of either embracing what is clearly a film that aims to explore their lives, but goes about doing it in such a heavy-handed manner that it loses a lot of its impact and ultimately becomes extremely weak, despite all the potential it had at the outset. It’s not a good film, and there are many reasons it can be considered a failure, but it all starts with the fact that it seemed to have very little interest in actually exploring the healing power of music beyond simply providing this as the thesis statement, rather than daring to do anything even vaguely interesting with the material, something that becomes quite clear as the film progresses.

From the narrative deficiency, we begin to see just how much of a failure Song Sung Blue is when it comes to the execution of its ideas, which is just as impoverished. I’m not sure what kind of director would have been most appropriate for this story, but someone who seems to function by arranging events in chronological order is the most basic and uninspired approach, and one of many reasons why the film struggles to leave even the most vague impression. Under this, we find several problems – tonally, it is a complete disaster, since it is unable to decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama, and tries to blend both into an overwrought mess, where the humorous moments are tacky, and the dramatic ones are beyond laughable. It’s not a good sign when the moments that elicit the most laughter are those which are supposed to be the most tragic, but we can’t help but be amused by how heavy-handed the narrative becomes, and how Brewer’s direction is so uninspired that it borders on truly atrocious. It’s a career low for someone who may not be hailed as some revolutionary auteur, but at the very least has been able to be seen as a solid journeyman filmmaker. Here, he’s bordering on vulgar in terms of how he tells this story, failing to do anything that even vaguely honours these people or their lives, and also thinking the audience is foolish enough to fall for the same hackneyed tricks that we usually see in these stories – why would we fixate on the ridiculous, melodramatic arguments or the lack of any real dramatic tensions when we are given flashy, over-the-top renditions of “Sweet Caroline” or any of the iconic songs from Diamond’s body of work? It’s painfully condescending, and any affection we may have for the material, or grace we may afford tot he director, is immediately extinguished when it becomes clear that Brewer does something that proves his perspective is not worth exploring: he simply does not care about these people, and uses them instead as a means to get a reaction from the viewer, instead of honouring their lives and legacy.

The direction is bad enough to warrant our cynicism, but we could at least expect the performances to elevate the material – after all, there is enough fertile ground for any actor to deliver stellar work. Unfortunately, Song Sung Blue not only is not elevated by the actors, its actively harmed by them, since they seem to occupy the same headspace as Brewer, insofar as they are focused on doing the most rather than showing any restraint (at least there was some cohesion between the director and his stars, it’s a pity it turned out to be so deeply miserable), which is a problem that seems to define this film and make it so profoundly bland in every possible way. At some point in the last decade, Hugh Jackman has gone from being the multitalented, charismatic film star who found the perfect balance between rugged masculinity and tender sensitivity, to an unbearable ham, someone who plays to the rafters whenever he gets the opportunity, even when a more subtle approach may have been more appropriate. In this film, we find all of his worst quirks and techniques on full display – he does far too much every time he appears on screen, and he is so desperate to be viewed as this lovable protagonist that his over-the-top enthusiasm becomes grating. He is a talented performer, so he does manage to sell the musical numbers, but these are severely undercut by the dramatic moments in which his lack of subtlety are fully on display. Kate Hudson is his scene partner, and while she is marginally better (solely because she can show a bit more restraint), she is still not particularly good, especially considering so much of the film’s dramatic material rests within her arc. The pair have very little chemistry, and while they’re not atrocious, they don’t do nearly enough to justify some of these choices, and Brewer is either too lazy or intimidated to push them to actually be better actors, leading to the film becoming an absolute disaster in terms of showcasing their skills, which barely register in any meaningful or frankly decent way.

My personal bias towards Diamond aside (I find him decent at best, but he’s never registered as particularly interesting to me), Song Sung Blue is a film that simply does not work. In fact, it has so much reverence towards him as an artist, it scrambles to tell us why he’s this influential, generation-defining artist, while also being so mangled in terms of its execution that even the most dramatic moments register as laughable, dishonouring not only Diamond’s legacy, but also those of its subjects, who deserved far better than this film. It’s a heavy-handed disaster of a film, a bland and unconvincing biographical drama, a messy and inconsistent musical comedy and just a generally insincere, overly didactic attempt at telling this story that not only fails to stick the landing, but seems genuinely lacking in every way, losing our respect and admiration almost immediately, and struggling to provide any justification for its existence. Unfortunately the lives of Mike and Claire was plagued with tragedy, so it would have been impossible to tell their story without being at least partially reliant on the emotions – but even in this case, its profoundly bland and lacks any real consistency or charm, becoming too heavy-handed to leave even the vaguest impression, and instead being as dull and insignificant as a film like this could be. Whether you love the music or simply want to see a story of two people overcoming adversity, Song Sung Blue is not a good film, failing to live up to whatever potential it had, relying on the laziest tropes and most insincere material to become as boring a production as we could imagine, and ultimately losing us right from the beginning, from which point no salvation is ever possible.